"Irrational" Anxiety

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Does anyone worry, sometimes to the point of paranoia, after doing something simple such as sending an e-mail to a friend or someone close, in fear of having made a bad mistake such as, in this case, sending it to the wrong person or (with me at least) simply saying something amiss or spelling a word incorrectly?

I've been through fierce anxiety for a while now, and it has limited my life, but I'm starting to get over it. I don't think that many people know how anxiety can affect people with varying severity, and that it can take varying lengths of time to regain confidence. Also with the reasons behind it; an outsider may find it irrational, but in my case it is fear of being ridiculed due to past experiences, and it is difficult to change the thought process even though this forum generally has people more understanding and not as quick to ridicule. This is why I always scrutinize things such as these forum posts and check closely (usually three times or more) for mistyped e-mail addresses when sending an e-mail.

I guess the aim of this post is to see if anyone can relate, or whether I'm talking absolute rubbish .

Yes.

Yes.

Yes

yes. often!

I try (usually fairly successfully) to reason with myself, and don't indulge in checking behavior. Let the consequences be what they may! Mistakes haven't killed me yet...

Yes, but I come at it from another direction. I have serious perfection issues, so it's not really a fear. It causes me a lot of anxiety.

I live in a constant state of anxiety about anything and everything and it's impossible for me to stop it. I get times when it's a bit better but I completely understand how horrible it is and how easily misunderstood it is and so often undermined and dismissed as 'nothing'.

It's a really terrible feeling, all encompassing.
You're not on your own.

Tiffinity.

fudo relates, have 'suffered' severe OCD for several years now.

Sometimes, but I've gotten much better at letting it go.

Yes I do this quite alot too.

I really don't tell anyone the true extent of my anxiety its always there and very hard to work through for me at least.

Yeah I do that most of the time to.

Yeah, me as well

Yup. I think I'm getting better, but I'm still very prone to anxiety, and usually there's not much to be scared of. Though it's not often anxiety after the fact like it is with the OP, it's anticipation of mistakes I might make.

I tend to dismiss such anxiety these days, with a "don't be such a baby" attitude to it, but that way I still often get physical stress symptoms like shaking and poor concentration, which makes me slightly more accident-prone than usual, and the anxiety also tends to wreck my mood, so that my life seems a waste until the anxiety is over.

I think maybe a better way through would be to try to focus on the anxiety and express it, then look at the difference between the perceived and the imagined danger by asking questions such as "what's the worst thing that could happen?" and "what's the most likely outcome?" and "if the worst happened, what could I do to fix it?" There's something about laying out all the relevent facts and really thinking (and feeling) it through that seems to help. If I don't do that process of lifting the stuff into consciousness, all I have are fleeting impulses of though, and my behaviour stays in the hands of my (?) unconscious, intuitive self, which sometimes gets the best result but mostly just does something silly like running away or over-reacting. A heart without a head is a liability, for me.

I am constantly anxious. I get anxious over things I have done, things I am going to do, and even things that will probably never happen. It seems like alot of people don't understand anxiety. My mother once told me that i can't have anxiety because I have nothing to be anxious about.

I have a certain constant level of anxiety. I know this because I'm always jumpy and easily startled. I'm also prone to "stress" dreams and stomach aches. Most commonly they involve being late or some natural disaster. I dream about tidal waves sometimes.

I don't think it has anything to do with whether or not I have stuff to worry about. Though, of course, it does get worse when I DO have lots on my mind.

I've been thinking lately that I might try to get some anti-anxiety medicine and see if that doesn't help. My concern is that it'll make me unlikely to do anything at all and I'll turn into a happy, albeit lazy bum.

Well, we'll see how it goes.

I've been offered happy pills too, but I can't see they'd be a longterm solution. But I've got nothing against being happy and lazy, as long as you can still keep your standard of life from dropping without exploiting the proletariat.

I can't imagine myself without an urge to improve my situation, even though I usually don't bother much. Somebody once commented that I come over as lazy, but that if you look more carefully you'll see that my mind's very active. I also think that my physical laziness (which can't be so awful considering I cycle a lot and walk pretty briskly) could be an attempt to negate my anxiety by expressing its opposite through my bodily attitude, if that makes any sense.